Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide Read Online Free PDF Page B

making his writing as awkward as his master’s rhyme.
    Trader’s Square was starting to come to life. There were only a few cart stalls, which their vendors had wheeled across the fitted cobblestones and in which they were now setting up their wares in the bitter cold of the winter afternoon. They would be there with their wares for the warmest hours of the chill day before carting them back home at night. Even now a few of them were issuing halfhearted calls out to those few villagers who were passing through the square. Unbidden, Jarod imagined the highwayman—the dreaded Dirk Gallowglass—riding suddenly into the square with the fearful Caprice Morgan slung across the back of his midnight-colored horse. Jarod would spring to Shaun Slaughter’s cart and turn to confront the rogue, holding a butcher knife firmly in one hand while swinging a string of linked sausage menacingly in the other.
    “Master Jarod?” Edvard again put a restraining arm on the young man’s shoulder.
    Jarod was so preoccupied with his envisioned heroics that he had nearly run into a lamppost in the square. He turned quickly to face the Dragon’s Bard. “All right! I do need your help. What do I do?”
    “I should be delighted, as I said, to assist you in winning the heart of your fairest of all damsels.” Edvard’s voice had that lyrical quality that so often endears one to the foolish and irritates those who have been taken in by it before. His carefully trimmed beard quivered with excitement before his countenance fell into sorrow and despair. “Alas, as you so well know, I am a prisoner of this good village—under the warrantless charge brought against me by the otherwise good ladies of this same Cobblestone Street on which we stand. How can I possibly help you if I am locked up in the depths of your most secure and punishingly chill dungeons? I do not mind for myself, you understand, but what of my poor assistant?”
    Abel looked up with a skeptical eye. Of the two of them, he was by far the more suitably dressed for the weather.
    “Fine!” Jarod said as they reached the northern wall of the countinghouse. “I’ll talk to my father. He’s on the village council and . . . well, maybe we can work something out . . . but you keep your promise!”
    Jarod and the Dragon’s Bard turned the corner of the building together in such earnest conversation that they did not see the enormous creature standing in front of the countinghouse door before running squarely into its blanketed flanks.
    “Begging your pardon, Master Jarod, but you should pay more attention to where we are—by the heavens!” Edvard exclaimed as he backed hastily away several steps.
    Edvard’s upward gaze was met by the deep-set stare of an enormous centaur that more than filled the Bard’s vision. The beast was large even among others of his kind—more like a draft horse or warhorse in size as compared to the much lighter thoroughbreds or show hunters. His arms were larger than Jarod’s thighs. He wore a padded coat over his doublet and a thick but well-worn caparison that extended from the base of his torso back over his flanks. His wide head was topped by a beaten leather hat with a brim whose original color and shape could only be guessed.
    His hair was long, as most centaurs wore it, but it had gone grey, and even under his hat it was evident that his hairline had receded so far as to leave his forehead a wide beach at low tide. His face was broad and strong, but wrinkles had disturbed and softened the original angular lines. His chin was covered in pronounced grey stubble.
    The centaur had been engaged in conversation with a thin, haggard-looking man, but the latter was both literally and figuratively overshadowed by the gigantic being.
    “Our apologies, Farmer Bennis,” Jarod called up, his breath forming momentary clouds in the frosty, still air.
    “Good day, Master Jarod,” the centaur replied in a deep, resonant voice, though his eyes remained on